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Borders Talk: Dots, Dashes & the Stories They Tell

Borders Talk: Dots, Dashes & the Stories They Tell

By: Zalfa Feghali and Gillian Roberts
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Hosted by Border Studies academics Zalfa Feghali and Gillian Roberts, this podcast explores border depictions and encounters in our contemporary world.

Zalfa, Gillian, and their guests discuss borders, their cultural manifestations, and their implications. In their aim to make the academic field of border studies accessible to non-specialist audiences, they ask questions like: “What do borders look like?”, “How are borders used and mobilised in our everyday lives?”, and “What different borders can be known?”

To answer these questions, they consider current events, personal stories, and specialist academic texts, as well as exploring and reflecting on “classic” texts of Border Studies.


© 2026 Borders Talk: Dots, Dashes & the Stories They Tell
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Episodes
  • Borders and Cosmopolitanism
    Feb 26 2026

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    RIP Moira Rose, also sometimes known as the great Catherine O'Hara.

    We refer to April Carter's The Political Theory of Global Citizenship; James Clifford's "Traveling Cultures" in Cultural Studies; Homi Bhabha's The Location of Culture; Walter Mignolo's "The Many Faces of Cosmo-polis: Border Thinking and Critical Cosmopolitanism"; Jacques Derrida's On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness; Immanuel Kant's "Perpetual Peace: a Philosophical Sketch"; a speech by former Conservative UK prime minister Theresa May; we love Star Trek; a speech by former Conservative UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher; cities of sanctuary, especially currently in the US context; the Leicester 2021 census; Conservative-turned-Reform* politician Robert Jenrick's words about Birmingham; Reform-led councils installing UK and England flags; a survey about how people in the UK interpret the proliferation of flags; Gogglebox's episode that includes commentary on the proliferation of flags; Stuart Hall's "Encoding/decoding"; Steven Vertovec on superdiversity; Canada's official multicultural policy, about which Eva Mackey, Smaro Kamboureli, and Wayde Compton, among others, have written; Toronto's linguistic diversity; an example image of the non-border Zalfa saw; the straight line of much of the Canada-US border; and Wayde Compton again.

    *The UK's Reform party is not to be confused with Canada's Reform party (1987-2000), although they share similar right-wing politics. Canada's Reform party was

    The material in this podcast is for informational purposes only. The personal views expressed by the hosts and their guests on the Borders Talk podcast do not constitute an endorsement from associated organisations.

    Thanks to the School of Arts, Media and Communication at the University of Leicester for the use of recording equipment, and to the School of Cultures, Languages and Area Studies at the University of Nottingham for financial support.

    Music: “Corrupted” by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com

    Edited by Steve Woodward at podcastingeditor.com

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    39 mins
  • Borders and Water
    Jan 15 2026

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    Haven’t read Delacroix’s Small Boat yet? You know what to do! Head to your local independent bookshop, or borrow a copy from your library.

    Lines Drawn upon the Water is the title of a collection edited by Karl S. Hele about First Nations people in the Great Lakes borderlands.

    Speaking of the Great Lakes, our favourite line of David W. McFadden’s about Lake Huron is (still) from Great Lakes Suite.

    Behold the (UK) cover of Yann Martel’s 2001 novel Life of Pi.

    For more on the UK and France’s “one in, one out” deal, see this piece by Matilde Rosina.

    Three-year-old Alan Kurdi and his family died in September 2015.

    For information about Australia’s detention policies, see the Refugee Council of Australia’s website.

    Read Kent and Syla’s piece on small island nations here.

    For a starting point to thinking about responsibility, see Robert E. Goodin’s Protecting the Vulnerable (1985) or read the UN’s Global Compact on Refugees.

    The charity Care4Calais works with refugees in the UK, France, and Belgium.

    The material in this podcast is for informational purposes only. The personal views expressed by the hosts and their guests on the Borders Talk podcast do not constitute an endorsement from associated organisations.

    Thanks to the School of Arts, Media and Communication at the University of Leicester for the use of recording equipment, and to the School of Cultures, Languages and Area Studies at the University of Nottingham for financial support.

    Music: “Corrupted” by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com

    Edited by Steve Woodward at podcastingeditor.com

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    39 mins
  • Borders and Citizenship
    Oct 30 2025

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    This episode is the first time we’ve asked each other “how are you?” Yes, we’ve checked.

    Here are two “rankings” for passports: the Henley Passport Index, which describes itself as “the only one of its kind based on exclusive data from the International Air Transport Authority (IATA)” and the Global Passport Power Rank, which at the time of recording, ranked as “equal” passports issued by Canada, the UK, and Cyprus. Eagle-eyed listeners will note this has changed.

    Thinking about the nationality/citizenship distinction, here’s an example of that slippage in the British context.

    Gillian refers to C. Lynn Smith’s chapter “Is Citizenship a Gendered Concept?” in Citizenship, Diversity, and Pluralism: Canadian and Comparative Perspectives (eds Cairns et al.), 1999; and to Chelva Kanaganayakam’s chapter “Cool Dots and a Hybrid Scarborough: Multiculturalism as Canadian Myth” in Is Canada Postcolonial? Unsettling Canadian Literature(ed Moss), 2003.

    “White civility” is an important analytical tool developed by Daniel Coleman in his book of the same title, published in 2006.

    We discuss “Borders” by Canadian writer Thomas King, published in 1993 in the collection One Good Story, That One and more recently republished as a comic book with illustrations by the Métis artist Natasha Donovan.

    For more on the Haudenosaunee Nationals’ travelling difficulties, please see this CBC article by Ka’nhehsí:io Deer.

    The material in this podcast is for informational purposes only. The personal views expressed by the hosts and their guests on the Borders Talk podcast do not constitute an endorsement from associated organisations.

    Thanks to the School of Arts, Media and Communication at the University of Leicester for the use of recording equipment, and to the School of Cultures, Languages and Area Studies at the University of Nottingham for financial support.

    Music: “Corrupted” by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com

    Edited by Steve Woodward at podcastingeditor.com

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    35 mins
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